12 Responses to “Was professor’s e-mail lesson OK?”

1. michele Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 3:04 pm

   this e-mail was perfectly acceptable – our society has become so “overly PC” that it has negatively impacted our freedom of speech and free thought. colleges especially are venues for making people think more and putting this professor in a bind like this impairs his ability to teach and the students to hear terms that they have free will to agree or disagree with

2. Gerald Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 3:34 pm

   I am a high school teacher. I continually have to teach the history of Christianity, Islam, etc. I always tell my students that I do not claim women are inferior to men, but there were times in history when this belief was held as a universal truth. Then we discuss it. I am also gay. If we don’t look at the views of the church how can we understand their views, be they right or wrong. I do not teach my students what to think, but I do teach them how to think independently, giving them tools to do so. I don’t tell them my views are right, but I often tell them my views. But I emphasize that they must argue intelligently their positions even if they contradict me. I have been known to give extra credit for students who oppose my views but do so persuasively. This teacher needs to feel safe and should not have been punished unless he was expressing his views as absolutely correct, which the article implies he was not doing.

3. one2one Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 3:36 pm

   This is the stupidest thing I have heard lately. I fail to see how this is a hate crime when the professor is teaching specfic religious doctrine.

4. James Lee Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

   Another example of taking “political correctness” to the extreme stupidity that it is. We all understand that the liberals want Christianity silenced and removed from view. They obsess about crosses that have been in place for decades, the appearance of the 10 Commandments offends them even though the display exists on the walls of the U.S. Supreme Court. In California one school district banned the Declaration of Independence as being religiously offensive since it mentions the Creator who had endowed us with certain right. The university officials are nothing but overpaid spineless cowards.

5. Eve Kelly Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 4:21 pm

   The man was teaching a lesson…defining a term and concept, not claiming it as a personal belief. I am shocked that he was terminated! Gerald articulates it well in his response. I bet there are thousands of attorneys would would love to have been able to file this suit!

6. Jennifer Says:
   August 13th, 2010 at 5:44 pm

   The University’s reaction is ridiculous! Yet another knee jerk reaction by university administrators who try too hard to be accepting of a diverse population…. while hurting the faculty (and/or staff) who support them. This was simply a professor teaching the academic material.

7. Jan Says:
   August 20th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

   Although the University’s reaction is a knee-jerk raction to the very controversial issue of being PC,
   the student may have a point. It all depends on how the email was written. I’ve written emails, and others have too, that were interpreted the wrong way because the written word cannot convey the tone of spirit of the message. If the email was written very matter of factly without explanations at the beginning, then it could be interpreted as “hate speech”. We do not know how the message was written. So we shouldn’t be overly judgemental.

   Personally, I am a lesbian and I grew up with the Catholic faith. I am also a historian. I understand the point the professor was making, but I also understand the student’s point as well. I spent much of my younger years reacting to professors’ statements like this student did. When you feel like you have people against you, you react to the littlest of things. The student’s reaction comes from a societal acceptance of homophobia. If society did not accept homophobia, GLBT students and professors would not react the way this student did to the message. They would be able to step back from it and ask themselves “Did he mean that offensively? Or is it part of the discussion on natural moral law?” Maturity has also helped me immensely to not react to statements like the student in this situation did.

   My issue with this whole thing is – why didn’t the University conduct thorough investigation? If the prof was guilty of hate speech, then terminate! The yway this article is written, it sounds as if there was no investigation. Is that the reality? We don’t know!

8. Terry Says:
   August 20th, 2010 at 7:14 pm

   According to the last line in the article, “the university was convening a committee to determine “whether the termination was justified. This implies that there wasn’t a thorough investigation. It also implies that the chairperson of his department made the first and final decison in an effort not to offend the sender of the email rather than have that individual identify him/herself.

   PC is giving power to people in the wrong way.

9. Teresa Says:
   October 16th, 2010 at 12:12 pm

   I teach classic literature–our students “love to gripe” about the “N” word in pieces such as “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I explain that if these words are removed from the piece, it will erase these examples of racial prejudice from literature. This diction represents some of the language of that time–it cannot be erased–it is factual.
   If this professor sent out a factual replication from the text, then the student needs to be reprimanded for false accusation. Any student who does not understand that Catholic doctrine will promote ancient beliefs on marriage, creed, and origin should not take the course.

10. Steve Says:
    October 16th, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    Pretty warped reporting there. What’s the actual text from the email? Why isn’t the student’s side being told? I’m as paranoid as the rest of you, but this seems to me like a classic case of a professor doing some Monday morning quarterbacking regarding an email he sent out and you’re all just taking his word for what was in the email. I know, they’re administrators and they often act irrationally, but in this case perhaps there’s more to the story. I’d bet on it.

11. Voevoda Says:
    October 16th, 2010 at 10:14 pm

    I read the entire email, along with about a dozen articles on this topic. I also teach about this history of religion, although not religious philosophy. Here’s my reaction:
    1) In the email, Howell shifted from talking about “them”–Catholic teachings–to a position of advocacy. He not only advocated the position for himself, but he also tried to convince students that his position is the correct one. In other words, he went from teaching *about* religion to teaching a particular religion as truth.
    2) At a sectarian university, Howell’s form of instruction (teaching a particular religion as truth) would be appropriate. At a publicly-funded university, it is not appropriate in a credit-bearing course, because then the public is paying for religious instruction. And students who enroll receive a different sort of instruction from the one they paid for.
    3) Howell’s position has been funded by the Catholic Newman Center, even though the course carries university credit and is part of the Religion Department curriculum. The university has now decided that it will pay the instructor to avoid the obvious conflict of interest.
    4) As an adjunct, Dr. Howell was hired either semester-by-semester or year-by-year. If he failed to satisfaction the university, it is within its rights not to renew his contract. If the university terminated his appointment mid-contract, then he has legal grounds to contest the firing.

12. Steve Says:
    October 17th, 2010 at 2:06 am

    Thanks Voevoda. That’s pretty much what I figured.

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